PERSONAL AWARENESS AND RESPONSIBILITY

Strengths:

“I take personal responsibility of my choices and actions.”

I can accept that many or most of my shortcomings and achievements are because of my
own actions and choices and try to react accordingly. For example, last year I continually failed
my math tests every unit, even when some of them should have been passable, if I had studied
harder. This was the consequence of a plethora of my choices and actions; I have struggled with
math my entire life and should have known better than to take the hardest math course in my
most important year (IB 11), especially since I had not understood the material from grade 10
and therefore knew I would be behind. I also had an extremely busy schedule and suffer from
narcolepsy, which always seemed to hit during math class, making things extra difficult for me as
a student compared to my classmates. As a result, I should have put more time aside for studying
math, but since I chose not to, I ended up getting a very low mark in math. I accept this as the
result of my own choices and actions and tried to resolve this by taking a much easier math
course this year in grade 12, even if it meant sacrificing my IB diploma, but I knew it was the
right thing to do. I know I cannot change my math mark from grade 11, and that I have no one to
blame but myself, but I have accepted it as it is.

“I can set goals, regulate my emotions, and persevere in difficult situations.”

One thing I used to (and still sometimes do) struggle with is regulating my emotions and
persevering in difficult situations. Setting goals is one of the ways I have learned to mitigate that,
and I will often set small goals for myself in these situations to motivate myself to persevere and
try harder. For example, in seventh grade, I was asked to perform an original song in front of the
entire school. At first, this was nerve-wracking enough, but then I got sick with a cold, which
caused my voice to be congested and sore. I was well enough to still sing somewhat, so when it
was time for me to perform, I set the goal for myself to at least get through this one performance,
and if it was okay, then I could do the next (there were three different concerts I was to perform
at). I did feel a sense of panic and stage fright, as it was my first time performing by myself in
front of the entire school, but I managed to hide my fear and perform without much problem,
although my voice cracked a little more than it usually does, and I had to tell myself that it was
okay. None of the audience noticed and I was able to persevere to the next two performances.

Area of Improvement:

“I am personally responsible, self-motivated, and can advocate for myself.”

As someone who often puts others’ needs before my own, I can often struggle with
advocating for myself and motivating myself to do things that benefit myself. For example, if I
want to ask a teacher a question about something in class, I will hesitate to be responsible for my
own learning because of social anxiety and wait until someone else asks or end up never getting
an answer. I am working on this by trying to ask teachers for help when I need it, such as going
up to my teacher in English to see how I could bump my mark from a 6 to a 7 on an essay I
wrote in class. I hesitated for a long time despite her telling the class that we could ask her any
questions, watching other students go up and ask, and eventually summoned the strength to do
the same. I hope to be able to stop hesitating and advocate for myself without a second thought
because I know it will help me improve myself.

SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY

Strengths:

“I have positive peer and intergenerational relationships.”

Relationship are something I have always valued deeply and sometimes had trouble with
due to my social anxiety. Growing up, I usually had 1-2 good close friends rather than a large
friend group, and I developed those relationships well enough that I have almost never lost a
friend, due to my willingness to work hard in a relationship. I also managed to bond with
teachers very well, as well as younger students, and eventually I also learned to connect with
seniors. An example of this is my role in choir. Originally, I was only friends with people in my
own grade in choir, but when I moved up to the senior choir in grade 10, I was exposed to the
grades older than me for the first time (since, due to the COVID, I had never even seen most of
them when I was in grade 9). I was able to make healthy friendships with my seniors and grew to
love singing with them and working together. This continued as the year passed, the then-grads
graduated, and I became the middle year and worked to foster relationships with the grade
younger than me. I also connect well with the choir teacher on a personal level even since grade
9 and she is one of the teachers I am closest to.

“I value diversity, defend human rights, advocate for others, and act ethically in all my
interactions, including online.”

Diversity is one of my favourite aspects about people. I grew up as Chinese queer person
in a nearly all-white Christian school and was not exposed to many other cultures, even –
especially – my own. Therefore, I always value diversity and advocate for others, no matter how
different they are, and their human rights. My first experience with the LGBTQ+ community was
online, and at first, since I grew up in a Christian environment, I was judgemental. However, I
grew close to the people in this community and realized that they were people just like me, and
treated them with the respect that any cisgender heterosexual person would receive. Now, I learn
to accept other kinds of people, even those who are not accepting of myself. In my IB classes,
there are many people who are not accepting of my identity and my beliefs. However, I still treat
them with kindness and respect their beliefs, unless they treat someone else in my community
with discrimination, in which I try to stand up against them. A group of boys started making fun
of me and my friends for our identities, and we reported them without disrespecting them and
provided support for others that might be targets of their discrimination.

Area of Improvement:

“I am aware of my community and environment and work independently and collaboratively for
the benefit of others.”

I do not consider myself to be a very aware person – often, I feel that I am “left-out of the
know”, especially when it comes to things in the community. I do not like to watch the news and
miss many major events that occur within my own community, or I will be completely unaware
of some unseen drama that my friends are going through. This means that I can struggle to find
things that are able to benefit others in the community and environment. For example, I took a
long time to decide on a Capstone project because I was not sure how I could benefit anybody
else. I realized I was not that aware of problems that needed help in my community and I had to
do some research and investigation on the things that occur. Doing research on topics in my
community was enlightening and I now know many new ways to look into them, such as things
as small as the newspaper or asking the people around me.

CRITICAL THINKING

Strengths:

“I can analyze and make defensible judgements, draw conclusions, and consider a variety of
perspectives.”

When I was in full IB, I had to write an Extended Essay, which is a 4000-word uni-style
persuasive essay about a certain subject that the student must research and find a specific
question for. My topic ended up being a very niche topic and it was hard to find research relating
to it. There was only 1-2 studies that actually investigated my research question, so I had to look
into many other resources that correlated with my topic and analyze those to see if they had any
information pertaining to my research question. I had to make judgements on the information I
found to see how it could help me, and look from many points of view on explanations of my
question in order to draw conclusions for my essay.

“I can understand the purpose of my work and consider my audience.”

It took me a long time to decide what I should write about for my Extended Essay. I was
lucky to get the mentor/subject that I wanted – Psychology – but I realized I had no idea what to
write about. Eventually, with the help of my friends, I chose a topic about autism, which is
currently a very controversial topic that I find interesting and close to my heart. While writing, I
had to keep in mind that the essay must be persuasive, and that there had to be a direction to the
paper. I developed my own focus question, which was a very unique topic, and while I cared a
lot about the subject, I soon found that there was not much research on the topic. This meant I
had to use a plethora of research that did not all relate entirely to my topic in order to form my
arguments, and I also wanted to keep in mind that the audience might not know much about
autism, so I included a lot of context. Since the topic is controversial, I had to be careful about
my wording and making sure that I did not say anything that could possibly be taken in an
offensive way. I also had to rein in some of my own personal ideas on the topic because it was a
formal paper for IB that could not include those.

Area of Improvement:

“I can ask good quality questions, gather relevant information, and come up with well-
developed conclusions.”

One thing I want to work on is inquiry. I often take information as it is without

questioning it as a critical thinker might. For example, in math class, if I am presented with a
method of solving a math problem, I am not one to try and understand the ‘whys’ and ‘hows’ of
the method; I will simply memorize the process and try to apply it to questions. This means I
often struggle with word problems that do not specifically explain which process I should be
using, and I take a long time to find the relevant information pertaining to the question and figure
out what I need to do to answer it. I can get better at this by trying to understand concepts on a
deeper level by trying to ask those good quality questions that I have yet to think about.

Creative Thinking

Strengths:

“I can persevere and understand that failure can be productive.”

As a young child, in elementary to the beginning of middle school, I held myself to a

standard of perfection. I was one of the smartest kids in the class and I wanted to keep it that
way. Then, as school began to get harder in 7th and 8th grade, my grades dropped and I thought it
was impossible to ever reach my standards ever again. Specifically, I had always been the best in
my class at French, but I got extremely discouraged when we got a new teacher and my French
mark was suddenly lowered. My friends helped me realize that a few bad grades were not going
to ruin my life, and I persevered in working hard at French and learned from the mistakes I had
made in those tests, allowing me to become the top of my class once again. Since then, I try to
accept failure as it comes, refuse to beat myself up over it, and learn from my mistakes.

“I can take my ideas, evaluate, develop, and refine them, and make something productive out of
them.”
 I had a lot more creative ideas when I was in elementary/middle school then I do now.
Even then, I always loved writing stories and songs, and making graphics about the things I love.
While I don’t spend as much time on those things now, I still sometimes get the urge to do
something creative, but at those times I often do not have enough time to develop a new idea – so
I refer to my old ones. Reading my old short stories always makes me cringe, but it is fun to take
the evaluate the good and the bad from them and see how much I have improved since then. I
can take the good ideas and develop and refine them in such a way that I can rewrite the story,
either using the same plot or reusing certain aspects of the old story that I liked. It inspires me to
learn to be a better writer and I also do this with old songs I have written before, since it can be
difficult to come up with new songs, but polishing old ones and adding new parts of my style can
be easier and more fun.

Area of Improvement:

“I can create new and unique ideas that may provide new perspectives that influence how people
think about topics.”

Like I mentioned in the previous reflection, I can sometimes struggle to come up with
new ideas of my own. For example, I am an executive in many different clubs, such as the Guitar
Club that I founded with a couple of my friends. However, whenever we have meetings that
require brainstorming for new ideas of what to do in our clubs, I can never seem to come up with
new ideas of my own and instead support the ones that my friends come up with. I have learned
to compromise by providing different perspectives and suggestions on the ideas that my friends
have by looking at things from different angles that they might have not thought of.

COMMUNICATION

Strengths:

“I can listen, learn to contribute meaningfully to discussion and debate, consider different
perspectives, and build consensus.”

As mentioned above, one of my strengths is listening to other perspectives and

contributing in my own way about other way to look at a problem and solution. When working
as group in English, which is a common activity, I prefer not to speak up right away and listen to
all the perspectives that my peers have. For example, we all share ideas about the theme of a
work and build consensus on what it is together. From there, I connect ideas that go well together
and make suggestions that will work with as many people’s opinions as possible. I take feedback
and apply it to my ideas and build consensus through making sure every perspective is heard and
applied to the final result.

“I can work with other students to plan, inquire, and solve problems.”
 In IB I had to complete a CAS Project, which was very similar to the Capstone Project
but it was a group project. I struggled to find a group and therefore my group members were not
people I was used to working with, but it became a strong team and we even moved on to start a
club together. We worked together to plan our project and decide on our inquiry question. One
problem we faced was that we did not have all the equipment needed, so I did experimenting
with the equipment I already had and managed to create a makeshift sound system using guitar
amplifiers and an audio interface that I already had. My peers helped me by providing some tools
and their knowledge as well, and I am still proud now that we managed to make our own sound
system together. We now work together so well that we co-lead a club and have carried out
events together.

Area of Improvement:

“I can reflect on the processes of learning and share what I have learned.”

When a task or project is completed, I tend to consider it a one-and-done finished task

that I no longer had to ever look at again. This became a weakness – for example, once I had
written a math unit test that I knew I did poorly on, I did not want to review the unit and look
over the mistakes I made on the test. I figured it was over and I should just accept the mark, and
this lead to disaster when the final exam came around and I had not learned all the things I had
gotten wrong on the original test. My math teacher liked us to do our corrections in groups so
those who did well certain questions could assist those who had not, but I was always ashamed
and exasperated with myself, and did not ask the others for help. I am now working on this and
plan to always review tests and assignments and complete all my corrections, and ask for help as
needed, so that I actually learn from mine and others’ mistakes instead of moving past them.

PERSONAL AND CULTURAL IDENTITY

Strengths:

“I understand that culture is a broad concept that includes things like my geographic region,
nationality, sex/gender, age ethnicity, sexuality, language, and religion.”

When I was younger, I was under the impression that culture consisted only of ethnic
background. Growing up in Canada in an English-speaking Chinese home, this made it difficult
for me to feel like I had any culture at all. This made me learn to develop all the other areas of
culture that I was part of, such as my place in this country and my community, my identity in the
LGBTQ+ community, and the multiculturalism of the world around me. I have grown to love
learning about new cultures of the people around me as well as sharing my own. For example, I
have somehow made a habit of befriending students that come from other countries such as
Colombia, Thailand, Syria, China, and Korea. Some of them are ISP students that are here alone
and it is fascinating to hear about their lives and cultures and how they have developed overtime
after moving around the world and being influenced by all sorts of places. They always have
strong connection and sense of home to their mother country, and it is amazing to hear about how
different their lives are from my own. One of the friends I’ve made is a Korean girl who went to
school in China before she came to Canada, and she has seen all sorts of things and met all sorts
of people. Not only does she speak three languages, but she also has learned to love and accept
different cultures like the LGBTQ+ community and makes friends with seniors and children
alike, while still maintaining her love of Christianity and her roots in Korea. She inspires me to
love my culture while accepting and learning about all the others around me.

“I can define myself in terms of my relationship to others and to the world.”

As mentioned previously, I once struggled to find my identity as a Chinese-Canadian

queer person that could only speak English and felt that I could never fit into the labels of
society. I now feel as though those labels are unnecessary, as all that matters is how I define
myself as a human being and how I interact with others and my community. My biggest priority
has always been taking care of others, and it does not matter what kind of identity they may have
– if they need help, then I am happy to help them. For example, when we were in middle school,
one of my closest friends was not supportive of my LGBTQ+ identity, but still continued to be
my friend. Now, he has discovered that he too is part of the community and I feel honoured to
help him through his journey of discovery and guide him using my experiences as a queer
person.

Area of Improvement:

“I understand how what I value has and will shape my choices.”

Despite my fairly strong sense of identity and willingness to look at other perspectives,
sometimes my values seem so obvious that it can be hard to understand another point of view. As
a person who is very feeling-based, I might argue with somebody who is very logic-based and
matter-of-fact. My brother is very much a logical person who does not care much about personal
feelings, and this means we often struggle to reach a consensus when making decisions. It can be
difficult to see what his opinions are when my values, which usually involve the best possible
outcome for everyone’s feelings, overpower my ability to understand his point of view. For
example, when deciding if we should have a birthday party, I wanted to invite all of my friends
to make sure nobody would be left out and he did not want to have any party to save money. (We
are twins.) It becomes a problem every year and he usually wins, leaving me feeling upset, until
lately we compromised by having a mostly cost-free party for me while he celebrated by himself
as he wanted to.